10

Decide

By the time our kids are grown up, we’ll have made several decisions that concern them — several gazillion, that is. Some are bigger than others: “Yes, you can have a cookie, but don’t spoil your supper.” “No, I don’t think 13 is old enough to climb Mount Everest.”

Lots of the decisions we make about our children don’t have anything to do with developing the Intelligence River. But surprisingly many of them do. As you’ve seen, as our definition of intelligence expands, so does our arena for effective action, and more and more of our daily actions can be seen to influence our children’s cumulative and growing intelligence. Most of these decisions involve the minor moment-to-moment decisions which, in their cumulative effect, will make a huge difference.

But there are some up-front decisions you should think about — fundamental questions about what you’re up to as you help your children grow. Life has a way of reworking these plans. And you can be sure that you’ll lose track of them from time to time. But it’s still not a bad idea to have a big picture, an overall plan, tucked away somewhere in the back of your head, so you can take a glance at it from time to time, when the trees threaten to obscure the forest.

What Do You Want to Influence?

What goals do you have for your child? Do you hope she’ll be rich and famous, or will you settle for rich? Or do you hope he can have a quietly happy life without the potential pains of either wealth or fame? Well, you may not have a lot to say about it — we don’t always work out the way our parents imagine, sometimes to everyone’s relief, sometimes to everyone’s disappointment. But it’s virtually impossible not to think about what we want for our children, whether it works out the way we hoped or not.

Some of us set out with a very specific goal in mind: “She’ll be a tennis star.” We start tossing tennis balls at her in the crib, and never let up. Well, sometimes she turns out to be a tennis star. Sometimes she turns out to be a tennis star with a drug problem. And sometimes she turns out to be a CPA who enjoys a little tennis on weekends.

We have a tremendous influence on our kids. But the result of our influence escapes us — and should escape us. What they do with what we give them is their business, not ours. Once again, intelligence is only one part, and not necessarily the most important part, of what we try to influence as our children develop. We help them develop values. We hope to see them become confident and assured. We try, imperfectly, to show them what we think is important. Our influence diminishes as they grow — personally, I think it diminishes a lot faster and earlier than most of us believe it does, but also lasts longer and runs deeper than we believe.

We’ve worked our way to an enormously expanded view of what contributes to the Intelligence River. But intelligence isn’t everything by a long shot — it’s just the part of a whole person that this book happens to be about.

Influencing Intelligence

So, if you had a magic wand, what coordinated blend of abilities would you give your child? I hope that the questions that follow will encourage you to do your own thinking about what matters to you. There may be no reason to write out your thoughts, but it might be worth a chuckle 20 years from now. (And it might even be satisfying.) If you and others who will be important in your child’s development each want to answer the questions, as a basis for comparison and discussion, please feel free to make copies so you can answer separately.

If you take the “assignment” seriously, I’d also suggest spreading it across a couple weeks, and letting your thoughts incubate a bit as you move from one topic to the next. And remember, this isn’t a one-time process. You decide what your goals, intentions, responsibilities, and limits are thousands of times as your child grows. This time around is important though, especially if it’s the first time you’ve ever sat down to consciously think about these key questions. To make decisions consciously, after all, is to unequivocally decide to take responsibility.